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Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

By Joseph Laycock

…ogressive Satanic groups. These kinds of fractures are extremely common in new religious movements, but they are also painful for those involved. In covering this split, I have tried to honor the stories of all my interview subjects, but some may feel I wasn’t fair to one side or another. What alternative title would you give the book? The Devil and the First Amendment How do you feel about the cover? I like it a lot. There was a lot of anxiety ab…

Whistleblower Alleges $100B Hoarding Scandal by LDS Church; But There’s An Easy Fix

By Andrew L. Seidel

…t the church from hoarding this wealth (though other provisions of the tax code do). Transparency would simply require the church to disclose the details of their cache. Sunlight does not burden religious liberty, it cures fraud and abuse. Asking for transparency from every nonprofit is perfectly legal, but Congress has not acted. In an era of congressional gridlock and where civil rights laws demanding equality are maligned as anti-religious libe…

Catholic Anti-Nuke Activists Looking at 20 Years in Prison a True Test for Religious Freedom

By Patrick Hornbeck

…ons, such as a Sikh who successfully sued the Army in 2015 over a grooming code that would have required him to shave his beard and remove his turban. Justice, not to mention old wisdom about geese and ganders, demands that our judicial system should treat like cases alike. Either sincere religious conviction should be a defense, or it shouldn’t. There should be a healthy debate about the place and extent of religious exemption in contemporary, pl…

Is God a Winning Strategy for Democrats?

By Andrew L. Seidel

…Christians are better than Christianity. They employ their personal moral code, choosing the moral morsels from the Bible that square with their contemporary sensibility. The Bible does not portray Jesus as a liberal powerhouse. Or at least, not solely as the man liberal Christians claim. We need look no further than hell to prove this point. Americans possess an unparalled degree of religious liberty, but Jesus promises eternal torture if they e…

Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religion?

By Galen Watts

…d back in 2014, defended itself by invoking section 18 of the Human Rights code, which allows a religious group to restrict participation to the faithful. So while AA presents itself to the public as a “spiritual” program, distinguishing itself from “religious” groups, it nevertheless claimed “religious” legal status in order to protect itself. Although the definition of “religion” is generally assumed in common parlance, it is not in any sense ea…

Democratic Hopeful Pete Buttigieg Makes Faith 101 Misstep

By Daniel Schultz

…” I think he means it in the narrow sense of Jesus’ named opponents in the New Testament, rather than the broader sense of a synonym for “hypocrites.” You could reasonably argue it either way. It’s still problematic. Unfortunately, not enough Christians understand that Pharisees went on to become the dominant tradition in modern Judaism. Nor do many Christians get that the New Testament sees Pharisees through a partisan lens, as it were. They were…

American Missionary Could Face Genocide Charges, But Brazil’s Indigenous Communities Have a Bigger Problem

By Amy Fallas

…the Brazilian constitution protects these populations and their lands, the new president has considered these regulations an impediment to economic development and publicly said he won’t get “into this nonsense of defending land for Indians.” The policy of opening the Amazon for cultivation of its natural resources has had devastating effects on the indigenous population. According to anthropologist Alexander Hinton, Brazil’s indigenous groups dec…

Religious Freedom Battle Is Far From Over: Here’s What to Look for in 2019

By Patrick Hornbeck

…, when a federal judge in Wisconsin found the relevant portions of the tax code to be unconstitutional, but the three judges on the appellate panel did not tip their hand, although they showed few outward signs that they agreed. The regulation at issue is more than sixty years old, enacted in the 1950s to ensure that ministers at churches who could not afford to provide them with housing could nevertheless benefit from the same tax breaks as minis…

The Religious Origins of Fake News and ‘Alternative Facts’

By Christopher Douglas

…his wasn’t 100 percent.” As we’ve moved from an election dominated by fake news to a new Trump administration run on the principle of “alternative facts,” it’s worth taking some time to ponder what seems to be contemporary conservative credulity. We should certainly be reminded of the term “truthiness” that Stephen Colbert invented in October 2005 to capture some of the pronouncements of the George W. Bush administration. As he explained then, tru…

Why White Women Are Leading Defenders of Kavanaugh

By Sikivu Hutchinson

…e been buttressed by female voices. For the past 24 hours, the major cable news networks have pumped up air time of pro-Kavanaugh ads produced by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network (which is, coincidentally enough, run by Carrie Severino, a form clerk for Clarence Thomas). The most prominent ad features a respectable white woman waxing about how upstanding and morally unimpeachable Kavanaugh is. The not so subtle implication is that Kavanaug…